Meet Mike Elder, the next big TV culinary star

​Ten years ago, you were much more likely to see Kansas City native Mike Elder — a Chevrolet-certified auto mechanic — working on an car engine than fussing with the details of a cake.

But that was ten years ago. Since then, it’s cakes, not cars, that dominate Elder’s life. You can see for yourself this Monday, August 31 at 9 p.m. on the TLC series The Ultimate Cake-Off. Mike and his mom — who co-own Cakes by Cheri & Mike in Clinton, Missouri (although Elder says that “99 percent of our business comes from Kansas City”) — will compete with two other culinary contestants in a challenge to create an “edible masterpiece.” The winner of the segment — and Elder won’t reveal who it is — received $10,000.

How did Elder jump from automobiles to pastry? “Well, I was always the one drafted to help out my Mom when she started her baking business. She baked cakes in the basement of our house. My sisters weren’t that interested,” said Mike, who graduated from Hickman Mills High School in 1992 and moved to Clinton a decade later to work with both his mother and his father Larry, who owns an automobile restoration company. But Mike discovered a particular passion for pastry: sculptural cakes. His gift has made him kind of famous, in the Midwest anyway.